Good Ole Fashioned Family Fun!

It might not have been the ideal way my husband would have preferred to spend his Father's Day, but we all sure did have fun!

Today our family along with 5 other families all sun-screened the children, threw on the lifejackets and set the canoes, rafts, tubes, and anything else we could find that floated, and heading down the Minnehaha Creek for a day of fun and relatively 'free' family time. We set our floating things in the creek near Edina Country Club and had a finish point of right before Minnehaha falls. We didn't really know what to expect, but the children were all super excited so, we were too.

Oh, you could have never told us the adventures and laughter, with a bit of frustration for good measure, we were going to have. We shipped off just after 10am and instantly we felt transformed into a completely different world we forgot existed in our big city. We discovered things we never knew were there, we all laughed as our friends canoe tipped for apparently no reason right in the beginning, and we cheered watching our brave 9 year olds take on the 'rapids' at 54th Street. We got stuck many, many, many times on rocks, over logs, and I am convinced my husband was trying to steer us into all those branches on purpose!

But, the wonder and awe of all 19 children and 12 adults as we meandered through the hidden parts of the creek in Edina and saw homes we never knew existed. It is very much like being up north as the nicest parts of the homes actually face the water not the street. The sweeping lawns, the barking dogs, the people waving to us from their decks, the bikers stopping on bridges above to watch us as we paddled and floated by was truly just plain 'neat'.

The canoeing became a bit more 'hectic' once we hit Minneapolis, which seemed to take forever! I can also tell you some of those bridges you go under are what us Schwab's call, "spooky chicken". At one point in time we were all grossed out as we came up to what at a waterpark would have been fun, but in the city icky! When going under one of the bridges a pipe from the ceiling was dripping water down to the creek. One could only begin to imagine what that was and where that water was coming from. Needless to say, it was a 'scream factor' in our canoe.

We stopped a couple times to let some canoes catch up to other, let the children do some switching of who was pulling them and share our stories about various fallen trees, short cuts discovered, and an occasional, 'did you see that?'. We laughed at the toddlers who were sitting like Royalty in their car seats in the canoes...NO they weren't strapped in, just using them for seats and by the way, they were awesome! The little ones sat most of the time and just looked around!

Our final leg of the trip somehow ended my husband and I up with the baby in the canoe with us and 6 other children tied up behind us, floating on various things. Between France and Nicollet the creek gets a bit rocky, has many fallen trees, lots of sand bars and many other random things that made things fun and challenging at times. Add to that 6 children floating behind you and well, we limped to the Nicollet bridge with only a canoe left. Yes, in that short time we managed to pop every tube and even popped our big raft. When the baby started crying, we knew our family's trip down the Minnehaha creek was over.

The 5 other families were long gone, too far ahead of us so, we sat there, onto our next adventure of trying to figure out how we were going to get 7 children and 2 adults to our meeting place just upstream from the falls. As my husband hailed a ride from someone, I sat and joyfully watched the children skip rocks in the creek, pull leaches off of them, and squeal in delight at all of the treasures they were finding walking up and down the creeks sides. We laid out towels and had a mini picnic with what food we had left and no one seemed to care we were, for all intensive purposes 'stranded'.

We finally managed to get everyone over to our meeting point and pulled up in the car just as the rest of the families we were traveling with, were pulling up in their canoes. Very few of the inner tubes made the entire trip, but everyone had a smile on their face including the babies and the parents! We were all tired, but energized at the same time. Only one injury on the trip and that was a mom who got stung by a bee after putting her head into a beehive that she didn't see, ouch! The children were still not sick of the creek and they spent almost another hour jumping from the dock and swimming in the creek all while others splashed near the shore and others, pulled seaweed out of the creek by the handful.

It was a great way to spend Father's Day and so reminiscent of the lazy summer days I remember as a child. It took us just over 4 hours to go from Utley Park in Edina to the landing just before the falls in Minneapolis and it was definitely worth the time, energy, and effort! I would strongly recommend this trip/adventure to you all. We borrowed a canoe, but some of the other families rented canoes and lifejackets from REI. Either way, I say find yourself a canoe, some lifejackets and get ready to have an adventure!